Chapter 2

Love and love’s beauty only hold their revels In life’s familiar, penetrable levels: What of its ocean-floor? I dwell there evermore. From almost earliest youth I raised the lids o’ the truth, And forced her bend on me her shrinking sight; Ever I knew me Beauty’s eremite, In antre of this lowly body set. Girt with a thirsty solitude of soul. Nathless I not forget How I have, even as the anchorite, I too, imperishing essences that console. Under my ruined passions, fallen and sere, The wild dreams stir like little radiant girls, Whom in the moulted plumage of the year Their comrades sweet have buried to the curls. Yet, though their dedicated amorist, How often do I bid my visions hist, Deaf to them, pleading all their piteous fills; Who weep, as weep the maidens of the mist Clinging the necks of the unheeding hills: And their tears wash them lovelier than before, That from grief’s self our sad delight grows more, Fair are the soul’s uncrispèd calms, indeed, Endiapered with many a spiritual form Of blosmy-tinctured weed; But scarce itself is conscious of the store Suckled by it, and only after storm Casts up its loosened thoughts upon the shore. To this end my deeps are stirred; And I deem well why life unshared Was ordainèd me of yore. In pairing-time, we know, the bird Kindles to its deepmost splendour, And the tender Voice is tenderest in its throat; Were its love, for ever nigh it, Never by it, It might keep a vernal note, The crocean and amethystine In their pristine Lustre linger on its coat. Therefore must my song-bower lone be, That my tone be Fresh with dewy pain alway; She, who scorns my dearest care ta’en, An uncertain Shadow of the sprite of May. And is my song sweet, as they say? ’Tis sweet for one whose voice has no reply, Save silence’s sad cry: And are its plumes a burning bright array? They burn for an unincarnated eye A bubble, charioteered by the inward breath Which, ardorous for its own invisible lure, Urges me glittering to aërial death, I am rapt towards that bodiless paramour; Blindly the uncomprehended tyranny Obeying of my heart’s impetuous might. The earth and all its planetary kin, Starry buds tangled in the whirling hair That flames round the Phoebean wassailer, Speed no more ignorant, more predestined flight, Than I, _her_ viewless tresses netted in. As some most beautiful one, with lovely taunting, Her eyes of guileless guile o’ercanopies, Does her hid visage bow, And miserly your covetous gaze allow, By inchmeal, coy degrees, Saying—“Can you see me now?” Yet from the mouth’s reflex you guess the wanting Smile of the coming eyes In all their upturned grievous witcheries, Before that sunbreak rise; And each still hidden feature view within Your mind, as eager scrutinies detail The moon’s young rondure through the shamefast veil Drawn to her gleaming chin: After this wise, From the enticing smile of earth and skies I dream my unknown Fair’s refusèd gaze; And guessingly her love’s close traits devise, Which she with subtile coquetries Through little human glimpses slow displays, Cozening my mateless days By sick, intolerable delays. And so I keep mine uncompanioned ways; And so my touch, to golden poesies Turning love’s bread, is bought at hunger’s price. So,—in the inextinguishable wars Which roll song’s Orient on the sullen night Whose ragged banners in their own despite Take on the tinges of the hated light,— So Sultan Phoebus has his Janizars. But if mine unappeasèd cicatrices Might get them lawful ease; Were any gentle passion hallowed me, Who must none other breath of passion feel Save such as winnows to the fledgèd heel The tremulous Paradisal plumages; The conscious sacramental trees Which ever be Shaken celestially, Consentient with enamoured wings, might know my love for thee. Yet is there more, whereat none guesseth, love! Upon the ending of my deadly night (Whereof thou hast not the surmise, and slight Is all that any mortal knows thereof), Thou wert to me that earnest of day’s light, When, like the back of a gold-mailèd saurian Heaving its slow length from Nilotic slime, The first long gleaming fissure runs Aurorian Athwart the yet dun firmament of prime. Stretched on the margin of the cruel sea Whence they had rescued me, With faint and painful pulses was I lying; Not yet discerning well If I had ’scaped, or were an icicle, Whose thawing is its dying. Like one who sweats before a despot’s gate, Summoned by some presaging scroll of fate, And knows not whether kiss or dagger wait; And all so sickened is his countenance, The courtiers buzz, “Lo, doomed!” and look at him askance:— At Fate’s dread portal then Even so stood I, I ken, Even so stood I, between a joy and fear, And said to mine own heart, “Now if the end be here!”

They say, Earth’s beauty seems completest To them that on their death-beds rest; Gentle lady! she smiles sweetest Just ere she clasp us to her breast. And I,—now _my_ Earth’s countenance grew bright, Did she but smile me towards that nuptial-night? But whileas on such dubious bed I lay, One unforgotten day, As a sick child waking sees Wide-eyed daisies Gazing on it from its hand, Slipped there for its dear amazes; So between thy father’s knees I saw _thee_ stand, And through my hazes Of pain and fear thine eyes’ young wonder shone. Then, as flies scatter from a carrion, Or rooks in spreading gyres like broken smoke Wheel, when some sound their quietude has broke, Fled, at thy countenance, all that doubting spawn: The heart which I had questioned spoke, A cry impetuous from its depths was drawn,— “I take the omen of this face of dawn!” And with the omen to my heart cam’st thou. Even with a spray of tears That one light draft was fixed there for the years.

And now?— The hours I tread ooze memories of thee, Sweet! Beneath my casual feet. With rainfall as the lea, The day is drenched with thee; In little exquisite surprises Bubbling deliciousness of thee arises From sudden places, Under the common traces Of my most lethargied and customed paces.

As an Arab journeyeth Through a sand of Ayaman, Lean Thirst, lolling its cracked tongue, Lagging by his side along; And a rusty-wingèd Death Grating its low flight before, Casting ribbèd shadows o’er The blank desert, blank and tan: He lifts by hap toward where the morning’s roots are His weary stare,— Sees, although they plashless mutes are, Set in a silver air Fountains of gelid shoots are, Making the daylight fairest fair; Sees the palm and tamarind Tangle the tresses of a phantom wind;— A sight like innocence when one has sinned! A green and maiden freshness smiling there, While with unblinking glare The tawny-hided desert crouches watching her.

’Tis a vision: Yet the greeneries Elysian He has known in tracts afar; Thus the enamouring fountains flow, Those the very palms that grow, By rare-gummed Sava, or Herbalimar.—

Such a watered dream has tarried Trembling on my desert arid; Even so Its lovely gleamings Seemings show Of things not seemings; And I gaze, Knowing that, beyond my ways, Verily All these _are_, for these are she. Eve no gentlier lays her cooling cheek On the burning brow of the sick earth, Sick with death, and sick with birth, Aeon to aeon, in secular fever twirled, Than thy shadow soothes this weak And distempered being of mine. In all I work, my hand includeth thine; Thou rushest down in every stream Whose passion frets my spirit’s deepening gorge; Unhood’st mine eyas-heart, and fliest my dream; Thou swing’st the hammers of my forge; As the innocent moon, that nothing does but shine, Moves all the labouring surges of the world. Pierce where thou wilt the springing thought in me, And there thy pictured countenance lies enfurled, As in the cut fern lies the imaged tree. This poor song that sings of thee, This fragile song, is but a curled Shell outgathered from thy sea, And murmurous still of its nativity. Princess of Smiles! Sorceress of most unlawful-lawful wiles! Cunning pit for gazers’ senses, Overstrewn with innocences! Purities gleam white like statues In the fair lakes of thine eyes, And I watch the sparkles that use There to rise, Knowing these Are bubbles from the calyces Of the lovely thoughts that breathe Paving, like water-flowers, thy spirit’s floor beneath.

O thou most dear! Who art thy sex’s complex harmony God-set more facilely; To thee may love draw near Without one blame or fear, Unchidden save by his humility: Thou Perseus’ Shield! wherein I view secure The mirrored Woman’s fateful-fair allure! Whom Heaven still leaves a twofold dignity, As girlhood gentle, and as boyhood free; With whom no most diaphanous webs enwind The barèd limbs of the rebukeless mind. Wild Dryad! all unconscious of thy tree, With which indissolubly The tyrannous time shall one day make thee whole; Whose frank arms pass unfretted through its bole: Who wear’st thy femineity Light as entrailèd blossoms, that shalt find It erelong silver shackles unto thee. Thou whose young sex is yet but in thy soul;— As hoarded in the vine Hang the gold skins of undelirious wine, As air sleeps, till it toss its limbs in breeze:— In whom the mystery which lures and sunders, Grapples and thrusts apart; endears, estranges; —The dragon to its own Hesperides— Is gated under slow-revolving changes, Manifold doors of heavy-hingèd years. So once, ere Heaven’s eyes were filled with wonders To see Laughter rise from Tears, Lay in beauty not yet mighty, Conchèd in translucencies, The antenatal Aphrodite, Caved magically under magic seas; Caved dreamlessly beneath the dreamful seas.

“Whose sex is in thy soul!” What think we of thy soul? Which has no parts, and cannot grow, Unfurled not from an embryo; Born of full stature, lineal to control; And yet a pigmy’s yoke must undergo. Yet must keep pace and tarry, patient, kind, With its unwilling scholar, the dull, tardy mind; Must be obsequious to the body’s powers, Whose low hands mete its paths, set ope and close its ways; Must do obeisance to the days, And wait the little pleasure of the hours; Yea, ripe for kingship, yet must be Captive in statuted minority! So is all power fulfilled, as soul in thee. So still the ruler by the ruled takes rule, And wisdom weaves itself i’ the loom o’ the fool. The splendent sun no splendour can display, Till on gross things he dash his broken ray, From cloud and tree and flower re-tossed in prismy spray. Did not obstruction’s vessel hem it in, Force were not force, would spill itself in vain We know the Titan by his champèd chain. Stay is heat’s cradle, it is rocked therein, And by check’s hand is burnished into light; If hate were none, would love burn lowlier bright? God’s Fair were guessed scarce but for opposite sin; Yea, and His Mercy, I do think it well, Is flashed back from the brazen gates of Hell. The heavens decree All power fulfil itself as soul in thee. For supreme Spirit subject was to clay, And Law from its own servants learned a law, And Light besought a lamp unto its way, And Awe was reined in awe, At one small house of Nazareth; And Golgotha Saw Breath to breathlessness resign its breath, And Life do homage for its crown to death.

So is all power, as soul in thee increased! But, knowing this, in knowledge’s despite I fret against the law severe that stains Thy spirit with eclipse; When—as a nymph’s carven head sweet water drips, For others oozing so the cool delight Which cannot steep her stiffened mouth of stone— Thy nescient lips repeat maternal strains. Memnonian lips! Smitten with singing from thy mother’s east, And murmurous with music not their own: Nay, the lips flexile, while the mind alone A passionless statue stands. Oh, pardon, innocent one! Pardon at thine unconscious hands! “Murmurous with music not their own,” I say? And in that saying how do I missay, When from the common sands Of poorest common speech of common day Thine accents sift the golden musics out! And ah, we poets, I misdoubt, Are little more than thou! We speak a lesson taught we know not how, And what it is that from us flows The hearer better than the utterer knows.

Thou canst foreshape thy word; The poet is not lord Of the next syllable may come With the returning pendulum; And what he plans to-day in song, To-morrow sings it in another tongue. Where the last leaf fell from his bough, He knows not if a leaf shall grow, Where he sows he doth not reap, He reapeth where he did not sow; He sleeps, and dreams forsake his sleep To meet him on his waking way. Vision will mate him not by law and vow: Disguised in life’s most hodden-grey, By the most beaten road of everyday She waits him, unsuspected and unknown. The hardest pang whereon He lays his mutinous head may be a Jacob’s stone. In the most iron crag his foot can tread A Dream may strew her bed, And suddenly his limbs entwine, And draw him down through rock as sea-nymphs might through brine. But, unlike those feigned temptress-ladies who In guerdon of a night the lover slew, When the embrace has failed, the rapture fled, Not he, not he, the wild sweet witch is dead! And, though he cherisheth The babe most strangely born from out her death, Some tender trick of her it hath, maybe,— It is not she!

Yet, even as the air is rumorous of fray Before the first shafts of the sun’s onslaught From gloom’s black harness splinter, And Summer move on Winter With the trumpet of the March, and the pennon of the May; As gesture outstrips thought; So, haply, toyer with ethereal strings! Are thy blind repetitions of high things The murmurous gnats whose aimless hoverings Reveal song’s summer in the air; The outstretched hand, which cannot thought declare, Yet is thought’s harbinger. These strains the way for thine own strains prepare; We feel the music moist upon this breeze, And hope the congregating poesies. Sundered yet by thee from us Wait, with wild eyes luminous, All thy wingèd things that are to be; They flit against thee, Gate of Ivory! They clamour on the portress Destiny,— “Set her wide, so we may issue through! Our vans are quick for that they have to do!” Suffer still your young desire; Your plumes but bicker at the tips with fire, Tarry their kindling; they will beat the higher. And thou, bright girl, not long shalt thou repeat Idly the music from thy mother caught; Not vainly has she wrought, Not vainly from the cloudward-jetting turret Of her aërial mind, for thy weak feet, Let down the silken ladder of her thought. She bare thee with a double pain, Of the body and the spirit; Thou thy fleshly weeds hast ta’en, Thy diviner weeds inherit! The precious streams which through thy young lips roll Shall leave their lovely delta in thy soul: Where sprites of so essential kind Set their paces, Surely they shall leave behind The green traces Of their sportance in the mind, And thou shalt, ere we well may know it, Turn that daintiness, a poet,— Elfin-ring Where sweet fancies foot and sing. So it may be, so it _shall_ be,— Oh, take the prophecy from me! What if the old fastidious sculptor, Time, This crescent marvel of his hands Carveth all too painfully, And I who prophesy shall never see? What if the niche of its predestined rhyme, Its aching niche, too long expectant stands? Yet shall he after sore delays On some exultant day of days The white enshrouding childhood raise From thy fair spirit, finished for our gaze; While we (but ’mongst that happy “we” The prophet cannot be!) While we behold with no astonishments, With that serene fulfilment of delight Wherewith we view the sight When the stars pitch the golden tents Of their high campment on the plains of night. Why should amazement be our satellite? What wonder in such things? If angels have hereditary wings, If not by Salic law is handed down The poet’s crown, To thee, born in the purple of the throne, The laurel must belong: Thou, in thy mother’s right Descendant of Castalian-chrismed kings— O Princess of the Blood of Song!

Peace; too impetuously have I been winging Toward vaporous heights which beckon and beguile I sink back, saddened to my inmost mind; Even as I list a-dream that mother singing The poesy of sweet tone, and sadden, while Her voice is cast in troubled wake behind The keel of her keen spirit. Thou art enshrined In a too primal innocence for this eye— Intent on such untempered radiancy— Not to be pained; my clay can scarce endure Ungrieved the effluence near of essences so pure. Therefore, little, tender maiden, Never be thou overshaden With a mind whose canopy Would shut out the sky from thee; Whose tangled branches intercept Heaven’s light: I will not feed my unpastured heart On thee, green pleasaunce as thou art, To lessen by one flower thy happy daisies white. The water-rat is earth-hued like the runlet Whereon he swims; and how in me should lurk Thoughts apt to neighbour thine, thou creature sunlit? If through long fret and irk Thine eyes within their browed recesses were Worn caves where thought lay couchant in its lair; Wert thou a spark among dank leaves, ah ruth! With age in all thy veins, while all thy heart was youth; Our contact might run smooth. But life’s Eoan dews still moist thy ringèd hair; Dian’s chill finger-tips Thaw if at night they happen on thy lips; The flying fringes of the sun’s cloak frush The fragile leaves which on those warm lips blush; And joy only lurks retirèd In the dim gloaming of thine irid. Then since my love drags this poor shadow, me, And one without the other may not be, From both I guard thee free. It still is much, yes, it is much, Only—my dream!—to love my love of thee; And it is much, yes, it is much, In hands which thou hast touched to feel thy touch In voices which have mingled with thine own To hear a double tone. As anguish, for supreme expression prest, Borrows its saddest tongue from jest, Thou hast of absence so create A presence more importunate; And thy voice pleads its sweetest suit When it is mute. I thank the once accursèd star Which did me teach To make of Silence my familiar, Who hath the rich reversion of thy speech, Since the most charming sounds thy thought can wear, Cast off, fall to that pale attendant’s share; And thank the gift which made my mind A shadow-world, wherethrough the shadows wind Of all the loved and lovely of my kind.

Like a maiden Saxon, folden, As she flits, in moon-drenched mist; Whose curls streaming flaxen-golden, By the misted moonbeams kist, Dispread their filmy floating silk Like honey steeped in milk: So, vague goldenness remote, Through my thoughts I watch thee float. When the snake summer casts her blazoned skin We find it at the turn of autumn’s path, And think it summer that rewinded hath, Joying therein; And this enamouring slough of thee, mine elf, I take it for thyself; Content. Content? Yea, title it content. The very loves that belt thee must prevent My love, I know, with their legitimacy: As the metallic vapours, that are swept Athwart the sun, in his light intercept The very hues Which _their_ conflagrant elements effuse. But, my love, my heart, my fair, That only I should see thee rare, Or tent to the hid core thy rarity,— This were a mournfulness more piercing far Than that those other loves my own must bar, Or thine for others leave thee none for me.